The need for such planning has a lot to do with where the competition is being held. It is in Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia. It begins Sept. 19 and ends Oct. 3.

If Khanty-Mansiysk does not ring a bell in the same way as places such as Paris or London, here are a few facts about the place, courtesy of its official Web site. The city’s population is 62,000 and it is about 1,800 miles from Moscow. Among its amenities, it has 19 medical facilities, five museums, five public libraries (do they have chess sections?), a theater complex, a sports and cultural complex, a pool, five billiards clubs, six shooting galleries, four hockey stadiums, 12 saunas and 16 hotels. There are also plans to build a 919-foot Crystal Skyscraper designed by Norman Foster.

Choosing Khanty-Mansiysk to host the Olympiad may seem odd (or maybe it is), but the town has become a regular stop in the chess world. It was the host of the 2005, 2007 and 2009 World Cups, which are part of the cycle to select a challenger for the world championship. So some of the participants in the Olympiad are familiar with Khanty-Mansiysk.

For some chess players, that is exactly the problem. In recent years, a number of major chess events have been held in remote and, to most of the world, little-known places. A common complaint is that the competitions are not only hard to get to, but holding them in these locations hurts the prestige and the marketability of the game.

There are other problems as well.

The Olympiads are the largest international chess team tournaments in the world. Usually, there are more than 130 teams and around 1,500 players, coaches, chess officials and support personnel, so the facilities need to be big and well managed. Last week, The Week in Chess, a Web site that tracks many tournaments around the world, reported that the hotel for the Olympiad was not finished and that no company had been hired to handle logistics for the event.

This year’s Olympiad is particularly important as the general assembly of the World Chess Federation will be meeting to elect its top officers, including the president. The challenger for the presidency, Anatoly Karpov, and his slate of candidates and their support staff have all had difficulty finding places to stay.

The organizers are not the only ones having trouble. A letter published on Chessvibes, another chess news Web site, on Wednesday said that the top German national team is not going. Titled, “Why the German A-team will not participate in the Olympiad,” the letter, written by Arkadij Naiditsch, the country’s top player, is a long, excoriating, and often sarcastic, attack on many of Germany’s top chess officials.

For example, Naiditsch describes the national coach, Uwe Bonsch, a grandmaster, as doing nothing but making tea for the team during Olympiads, and says of him, “In my opinion, our national trainer could be a hero in any teahouse!”

Naiditsch writes of Ralph Alt, a prosecutor who is a tournament director who has often organized the national championships, that he always chooses times and places for the championships that match his holiday schedule. Naiditsch said that he last played in the 2007 championship because in that year, “Mr. Alt showed absolute class. He found a city in Germany that has no train or bus (or anything else) connection. So taxi was the only way to reach it. Respect for Mr. Alt!! This is really not so easy to do.”

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In its 1,500-year history, chess has imbedded itself in the world's culture and vocabulary. Ideas, terms and images from the game have long been used as proxies for intelligence and complexity. But chess is more than a diversion. Thousands worldwide play professionally or earn a living by teaching it to children. The Internet has transformed the game, making it easy for players anywhere to find an opponent day or night. Chess computers, originally developed to test the bounds of artificial intelligence, now play better than grandmasters. This blog will cover tournaments and events, trends and developments. Reader comments and questions will be more than welcome.

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